Tuesday, January 30, 2007

One of the president's biggest supporters (and ass-kisser) is our very own, Jon Kyl. I've ran out of adjectives to describe this man's idiocy. I was listening to NPR today and they had extensive interviews with Charles Schumer and Jon Kyl (separately). Schumer was gracious, intelligent, and humorous. Kyl was petty, didactic, and nauseating in his support of Bush's plan for a troop surge. In the past, Kyl has favorably compared Bush to Lincoln, Truman, Wilson and FDR. I am getting so tired of the phrase "emboldening our enemy". Apparently any dissent of our president or any desire to save lives by not putting more troops in harm's way is considered tacit support of Al Qaeda. Kyl repeatedly said that we were "sending the wrong message" to our allies and the enemy by not blindly supporting whatever decision the president makes. Perhaps if Bush had some history of making good decisions or of not lying, we might be able to give him the benefit of the doubt. But he has spent any goodwill he may have ever had and is running a serious political capital deficit. Aren't we "sending the wrong message" if we rubber-stamp our leaders' decisions regardless of the harm they do? Most people in the world actually think that Bush is the one with the wrong message ... that the U.S. is playing a "mainly negative" role in the world today. Even our allies say, "The United States is the first to be blamed for the rise of Iranian influence in the Middle East.".

Kyl has zero credibility after repeatedly beating the Iraq war drum and being one of the biggest spouters of WMD nonsense in the lead up to the war. Kyl should just shut his pie hole.

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it." -- Edward R. Murrow

8 comments:

dbackdad said: Apparently any dissent of our president or any desire to save lives by not putting more troops in harm's way is considered tacit support of Al Qaeda. Kyl repeatedly said that we were "sending the wrong message" to our allies and the enemy by not blindly supporting whatever decision the president makes.

..and there I was thinking that dissent is at the very heart of a functionally healthy Democracy. Isn't blindly following a powerful leader called Totalitarianism?

Yeah, well we'll see how long being back lasts. Maybe I'll even throw up a blog post someday soon.

You know, I was thinking about the Truman comparison as well and all I could think of with Truman was dropping the a-bomb, but then I realized he also started the Cold War. The Cold War can be directly compared to the War on Terror, except the War on Terror literally has the potential to NEVER end. Because where the Cold War had a definitive enemy, Soviet communism, the War on Terror is so broad that as little as one individual can perpetuate it for eternity.

The comparisons to Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR are better though considering the wars they all started and the way the suppressed dissent. In fact, one has to almost giggle when they hear people whining about being persecuted for dissent under Bush when you look at what happened to neigh sayers under Lincoln and Wilson especially. FDR not so much I suppose, I mean he had concentration camps for the Japs and all but that in the constitution somewhere. I think Section 11 article 19 or something. I remember reading something in there about the right of the executive branch TO arrest Americans without so much as suspicion of guilt. It's in there, just trust me.

Of course someone like Lyn would look at the comparisons as favorable because he's of the opinion that government knows best, and if it needs to shutdown newspapers like Lincoln did or hire citizens to spy on their neighbors like Wilson did to give the people what they *NEED* (like a good war), then that's what Gubby's gotta do!